Re: AppleScript need: Can a file open at all

On 2020-05-16, Tim Murray <[email protected]> wrote:
> I recently made a gross error of formatting a disk that had good data on it. 
> (My MBPro was stolen and when I got another, I ended up formatting my Time 
> Machine disk. Aaarrrgh! Some computer tasks should not be performed with 
> bourbon.) Anyway, I ran some recovery programs and got everything back, but 
> there is one issue.
>
> My PDFs are all named File0001.pdf, File0002.pdf, and so on, but there are 
> several hundred. Acrobat and Catalina’s Quick Look and Preview can deal 
> with many of them.
>
> What I am looking for is a script to run through a folder and determine if a 
> PDF can be opened or even if Quick Look works . . . I don’t need to 
> actually do anything with it, just see if it can be opened. If it cannot, 
> that’s okay: Trash it so that what remains are PDFs can be opened.
>
> In a way I don’t really need this per se, because I successfully retrieved 
> most, if not all, the original files that made the PDFs, such as InDesign, 
> Pages, Illustrator, and so on.
>
> So can someone here do that? Thanks.

I've done this PDF document validation in Ruby using the pdf-reader Gem
before. Here's a simplified example script:

---
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'pdf-reader'  # gem install 'pdf-reader'

class Reader
  def start
    filepath = ARGV[0]
    unless filepath.nil?
      if File.exist?(filepath)
        begin
          reader = PDF::Reader.new(filepath)
          puts "Document is valid: #{File.basename(filepath)}"
        rescue StandardError => exception
          puts "Couldn't open #{File.basename(filepath)}: #{exception.message}"
        end
      else
        STDERR.puts "ERROR: Specified file does not exist: #{filepath}"
      end
    else
      STDERR.puts "ERROR: You must provide the path to a PDF document as the first command-line argument."
    end
  end
end

reader = Reader.new()
reader.start()
---

Usage examples:

---
#./pdf_validator.rb ~/Documents/Hardware/Car\ Stereo/Old/KAC818.pdf                 
PDF seems valid: KAC818.pdf

# ./pdf_validator.rb some_bad.pdf                             
PDF does not contain EOF marker: some_bad.pdf
---

You could certainly wrap this in an AppleScript "do shell script"
command to automate it if you wanted to. But I'd probably just modify
the script to do exactly what I want and run it on the command line and
be done with it.

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JR